Plain Walls and GH2 Thoughts

There’s a wall type in GearHead that is described simply as “Wall”, and now it has a fancy new sprite. Well, maybe not fancy, but what do you expect for the most generic wall in the game?

I’ve been thinking about the improvements to GH1 that I need to port to GH2. I think my next big programming task should be to catch up the GH2 source to the current state of GH1. The longer I leave it the more of a nightmare it’s going to be, and it’s already kinda scary. Here are the main things that need to be updated:

Resizeable window with GH1 style panels.

Move the saves and the config file to the user’s home/config folder.

Copy the much-improved GH1 character generator and training layouts. Add instructions to the phone interface.

Update the romance and gender options.

Allow lancemates to purchase skill training, and allow cycling of lancemates from the backpack interface.

Update the colormenu with the improvements made in GH1.

Make sure status effects don’t have any effect during quick time. Also make sure that the DirKey function updates the screen correctly.

Update the GH2 logo, and give it a proper name. GH1 is “GearHead: Arena”, but GH2 is just GH2. Right now I’m leaning towards “GearHead: Superstar” but I’m not sure whether that is too cheesy or exactly cheesy enough.

Add the animated water and thin door sprites.

That should bring GH2 into line with GH1. Later on I’ll post about my plans to finish GH2 properly.

Joseph Hewitt

4 comments

For the love of god, please, I beg you, change the GH2 shops to have a daily changing inventory like the GH1 shops. Nothing is crummier than having to savescum a hundred times until the Silver Knights vendor finally sells the Spinal Pilot Link and the Paladin Armor.

Some of my personal qualms with GH2:
Repair fuels are hard to find. Probably related to the shop issue above.

Robotics does not take repair fuels like mecha welding set. (This is probably a bug, I guess)

Ammunition is way too expensive, even for pretty mundane weapons. Also, using salvaged weapons reduces ammunition cost, that’s the saving grace of having that salvage tag, but it’s pretty strange,

Too many people with their mecha in repair shop. You have to pass a few skill rolls to get any outcome but even so it doesn’t seem to give you anything, not even a better reaction from the npc. I guess this is because there aren’t too many quests right now so it popped out often, but this quest itself doesn’t seem to have any point unless it makes it clear that you can earn some skill practice from it. And make the npc less ungrateful.

I’d suggest waiting with standarizing GH2 and GH’s code till you’ll integrate all those goodies Japanese coders added into the international, unofficial version of the game which you planned to take a look at.

As for subtitles, I actually am against. Already the “Arena” thing is kinda not-that-great, IMHO, especially given that the game isn’t even about arenas – you can play totally fine without being a part of mecha fighting entertainment industry. People also seem to prefer to keep the simplicity and call the games Gearhead and Gearhead 2 when discussing them – and I certainly wouldn’t mind it if that’d be all that there is for the titles for them.

Simple, stylish, easy to remember and not potentially misguiding. A proper name.

By comparison, slapping a subtitle onto it and making a game “GH2: Superstar” would sound more like the plot is about becoming a singer or other such celebrity in the world where there are mecha in the background, rather than far bigger in scope game about choosing one’s own path and carving one’s little niche in such world.